It is customary for the manufacturers of printers, copying, and facsimile machines to use a powdered form of zinc stearate as a "padding powder," as it is commonly referred to in the industry, to minimize wear and tear on the photoreceptor drum and wiper blade. Without "padding" these components with dry lubricant, they wear or run out of usefulness quickly. Once the component runs out of usefulness, it must be replaced at great expense by a highly skilled and highly paid printer or copier technician.
Some manufacturers place the photoreceptor drum and wiper blade in a throw-away cartridge. These cartridges are often re-manufactured or recharged for the purpose of extending the life of the cartridge by disassembly of components, checking for worn parts, vacuuming and re-filling the toner powder, replacing the worn parts, and reassembling the components.
The wiper blades, often made of a material such as or similar to urethane, scrape excess toner off the photoreceptor drums. Oftentimes the photoreceptor drums and wiper blades can develop scratches and other wear from constant rubbing of the wiper blade. Checking for scratches and wear of these components is a common practice in remanufacturing because the components get scratched and worn so frequently. Also, these scratches usually occur in the middle of a usage cycle and thereby are a constant problem of both original manufacturers and the remanufacturer. Both credibility of the printer as well as the remanufacturer or service company is reduced every time a component wears out before its scheduled time. By lubricating the photoreceptor drum and wiper blade with zinc stearate, the life is extended in the current state of the art.
Many companies now remanufacture the throw-away cartridges, which oftentimes contains the parts that wear such as the photoreceptor drum and the wiper blade and in some cases the doctor blade. Many companies do this remanufacturing out of their homes, in their home basements, home garages, and others from industrial environments.
Many copier and printer cartridge remanufacturers and rechargers, as they are sometimes called, are particularly concerned about generating hazardous zinc stearate dust in their face as well as in their home living environment, especially considering that toxic zinc stearate is usually dusted on in most applications by putting the powder in a sock or cloth bag and tapping the dust bag onto the photoreceptor drum and wiper blade and thereby causing extensive local dust clouds containing this hazardous padding powder. This hazardous dust is not desirable for the remanufacturer doing work out of his house, nor is it desirable for the worker exposed to this dust in an industrial setting.
The use of dry lubricant material for wiper blades and for photoreceptor drums is not limited to the remanufacturers of throw-away cartridges. It also includes copier technicians who apply dry lubricant. Some end-users also apply dry lubricant on photoreceptor drums and wiper blades. Finally, of course, original equipment manufacturers apply materials to the wiper blades and photoreceptor drums in the factory manufacturing process.
Zinc stearate, the most commonly used material for the purpose of photoreceptor drum and wiper blade lubrication, and other products have the disadvantage of being hazardous and also have significntly greater friction than desired, causing these components to wear out sooner than desired. Partial attempts to address these problems have been made. U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,249 discloses an improved cleaning blade for a photoelectronic copying machine. The blade is coated with a perfluoropolyether to increase its wear resistance, lubricating, and cleaning properties. It is also known in the industry to replace the zinc stearate with a lubricant powder consisting of ground Kynar(.TM.) plastic. But this is more expensive (approximately ten times the cost) than the lubricant powder disclosed in this application, and Kynar(.TM.) does not reduce static electricity created during operation of the machines.